1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inline skate, and more particularly, to a steerable inline skate which makes a user change the direction more easily and reduce wheel wear to thus enhance the controllability and the service life by making front and rear wheels steerable among a plurality of wheels arranged in a line to be user by utilizing a trapezoidal linkage mechanism.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, skates may be divided broadly into ice skates for skating on the ice and roller skates provided with wheels for obtaining the effect of doing ice skating on the ground.
The roller skates are largely divided into quad roller skates and inline skates. The quad roller skates are generally known as roller skates and consist of a skate boot commonly made of leather with two pairs of wheels bilaterally arranged at the front and back of the bottom, that is, four wheels are directly attached on a frame, being mounted to the frame in such a manner that the wheels form the vertexes of a rectangular. The wheels are located at the front and back and at the left and right. This makes it easy to keep the center of gravity of the body, so the roller skates of such a type are suitable for children or beginners.
The inline skates are also widely known as roller blades which are the name of a manufacturer and consist of a plurality of wheels rolling contacted on the ground and arranged in a single row at the front and back in a frame. Though it is difficult to keep the center of gravity of the body as compared to the quad roller skates, the inline skates can put on a higher speed and make skaters perform a greater variety of feats. By these advantages, the popularization of inline skates is currently going on with rapidity and inline skating has becoming popular as an excellent activity for leisure that people can enjoy irrespective of season and place.
FIG. 1 is a side view of a conventional inline skate and FIG. 2 is a partially sectional view taken on line A—A of FIG. 1. The inline skate generally comprises a boot 11 for receiving the foot of a user, a boot chassis 12 for supporting the boot 11 and serving as the outer coat of the boot 11, a wheel frame 13 attached to the bottom of the boot chassis 12, a plurality of wheels 14 arranged on the wheel frame 13 in a single row and a brake 15 mounted on the back end of the wheel frame 13.
At this time, a flat coupling plate 16 is provided on top portion of the wheel frame 13, with the bottom of the boot chassis 12 and the wheel frame 13 being tightly contacted and fixed respectively to the top face of the coupling plate 16 and to the bottom face thereof by a fixing member.
In the conventional inline skate thus configured, as shown in FIG. 2, the wheel 14 is mounted on the wheel frame 13 by means of a bearing 17 and an axle shaft 18 and is configured such that it is only capable of forward rotation and reverse rotation around the axle shaft 18. Therefore, in a case that the user wants to change the direction of its movement during inline skating, he has to make sideslip of the wheels to steer his skate on the ground that requires comparably high-level skill and physical strength. Even if a user is fully aware of good techniques, it is difficult to make the sideslip instantly when he runs down a hill, so he cannot easily change the direction of his movement, thereby causing a safety accident to happen.
In addition, the sideslip accelerates wear of the wheel 14 to shorten the service life of the wheel 14.